With the midday sun shining down on me, I clenched my fist, feeling a noticeable difference in my body after giving my body a night to recover. I certainly wasn’t in the worst shape before, but after forming my first magic circle, I could sympathize with Lunia in how she viewed herself before getting continuous access to mana.
Physically, I was in the best shape I had ever been, able to now exert two times as much strength for twice as long. In the morning, when I ran to go wake Lunia up, I felt as if I was soaring through the air, the gentle wind blowing across my face addicting to the point I briefly considered not going to class in favor of just running around Celestia.
But the benefits weren’t limited to just my physicality. Before, after going to Mana and Alchemy 101, my brain would go foggy, my eyelids dropping down, and I would have to bite down on my tongue, drawing blood to even just maintain consciousness. Now, even after today’s lessons, which in both classes were particularly difficult, I still felt normal.
Even just the little things, like the air that entered my lungs, the sound of other peoples’ voices, the speed at which I could answer Lunia when she spoke to me, they were all somehow crisper, more refined, as if I was viewing the same world as before, only through a different, better lens.
But, this sudden change didn’t not have it’s drawbacks.
I hadn’t originally planned to send environmental mana directly into my soul to form my magic circle, as I had read just how dangerous that was and how if I directly absorbed too much mana in a short period of time, I risked a full meltdown of all of my channels. But when I saw just how little of the circle I had left to draw, I went mad, completely forgetting any and all inhibitions I might have had.
Luckily, I somehow succeeded, but that didn’t mean that what I did wasn’t completely and utterly stupid. Looking back, there were a thousand things I could have done differently that would have lessened the number of errors I made. I should have actually practiced manipulating the mana within me and not just stubbornly tried to raise my mana conductivity for so long even after it became evident that I was stuck at a bottleneck. I should have studied the first magic circle more intensely to the point where I could draw it perfectly on paper off of memory.
But hindsight was twenty twenty, and because I didn’t do those things, nearly every single organ inside my body had ruptured or begun to bleed, and I needed to go to the healers, spending five points and three hours of my time to be patched up back to a bit under tip top shape.
After leaving the healer’s offices however, instead of resting and avoiding any strenuous activity for a week as I was directed to do, I cultivated once again, too excited not to do so, only to find that with each cycle, there was a distinct difference in the amount of mana being deposited into my mana stone than before.
I only confirmed that there really was a change, as after measuring my mana conductivity, I learned that it had decreased, going from 21% to 20%.
That loss stung, but the pain was somewhat offset by the joy I felt from forming my magic circle. Even now, with my not being in the soul plane consciously cultivating, my mana stone was still being passively filled by the spinning magic circle, such that it could go from being completely empty to saturation in the span of a day.
But suddenly gaining access to so much mana didn’t mean anything if I was unable to properly use it. With the second dream being only a couple days away, I was truly beginning to feel the weight of my inadequacies. I had no way of incorporating mana into my attacks and despite it being an undeniable reality, that fact brought about a profound sense of discomfort within me.
With such thoughts in my mind, I began to speed up, wanting to get to the school shop as soon as possible.
The school store took up a total of two buildings, and they both were of the exact same, featureless exterior so typical of Celestia, but one should never judge a book’s contents by it’s cover.
In both buildings, the higher the floor an item was displayed, the more expensive it would be, with the cheapest item able to be bought in building 32 being a container of goblins blood costing ten points, while the most expensive, on the topmost floor, was going for ten thousand points and was a spell of the fourth level.
In building 42, on the lowest floor, the cheapest item was being sold for fifteen thousand points, while the most expensive object on the same floor had a price of one hundred thousand points. I didn’t even know the price of the most costly item on the top most floor, as directly after setting foot onto the second floor, I grew uncomfortable, feeling as if I was being judged for how poor I was despite there not being any person around me at the time.
My memory of what exactly the more expensive store's second floor contained was hazy however, as I only gave a very cursory inspection before leaving, but I distinctly remembered there being a small bottle of a dull green colored catalyst being sold for one hundred fifty thousand points.
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Making my way into the lower cost store, I directly made my way to and up the stairway, knowing that everything on the first floor had little to no chance of making me stronger in any meaningful way.
I stopped and entered the second floor. The upper floors of the lower cost, and all of the floors of the upper cost stores’ items were stored and displayed individually, in sleek, minimalistic stands lit by harsh, white lights, but here, where the lower cost items were, there was no such attention to detail, with there instead being rows upon rows of shelves that went from floor to ceiling.
Sitting on those shelves and crammed behind glass windows were a myriad of different items, each of them displayed with a small box of text describing what it was and any other relevant details in order to attract anyone with enough points to burn a hole in their pockets.
On account of my doing well in Alchemy and Mana 101, I could be considered one of such people.
Already an idea in mind on what I wanted to buy, I quickly made my way down the shelves, before coming to a stop in front of a display case containing a closed scroll of parchment and labeled Strengthen Shield.
A level 1 spell of the earth nature, when it was cast on a shield, it would result in the shield being strengthened, such that it would be able to better block attacks and remain strong even after doing so.
Lasting for a total of one hour, if I were to cast the spell, the amount of mana that I would need to use would probably take me two or so hours to regenerate.
After the first dream, it was made very apparent that I needed a way to defend myself. Offensively, I would rate myself quite well, with a crossbow for long range, spear for middle, and short sword for close. But if my enemy were to attack me from far away with magic or arrow and there wasn’t cover around, I would be, for lack of a more concise term, fucked. I needed a shield so I could at the bare minimum, somewhat protect myself.
Compounding on that, because of my currently possessing 1525 points and Strengthen Shield’s price of fifty points, I could even look around for more spells to purchase and add to my repertoire.
Although I didn’t know if I had a talent for spells of the earthen nature, having never cast any spell of any type before, I still had confidence. Not only was the mana cost relatively low, but it was of the earth nature, or one of the world’s base elements, meaning I would have a minimum amount of talent for it. That, and combined with the complexity, or rather, lack thereof, of the spell’s structure made the chances of my being able to successfully cast the spell as close to guaranteed as humanly possible, barring any sudden, unexpected turn of events.
About to tap on my point bands to make a payment, I stopped at the last second, deciding instead to first browse the rest of the floor.
The only spell I vividly recalled from my previous visit was Strengthen Shield, on account of it’s name and my newly formed desire to pivot my focus to defense. As for everything else in the shop, after a certain point, I remembered just looking at the price and not actually reading the descriptions, too restless to do so.
Beginning to make my way down the aisles, I softly hummed as I read the details of the spells on display, absentmindedly thinking just how empty the shop was in between those moments.
Finished inspecting nearly all of the spells being sold on the second floor, I already had a couple in mind I planned to buy along with Strengthen Shield.
However, as I continued to read about the last spell left, Flame Shot, that plan was put on hold.
Flame Shot, a level 2 spell, when successfully cast, would generate a large, flaming arrowhead like construct, that after being fully formed, would promptly shoot out with a burst of power, penetrating deeply into the target if it successfully landed, before exploding a second afterwards.
It was stated Flame Shot was created off the belief that although an enemy’s outsides were strong, their insides weren’t, and as a result, it was one of the most potent level 2 flame type spells, with it even able to contend with some level 3 spells in power.
Flame Shot was judged as level 2 from the sheer complexity of it’s magic circle rather than how much mana was required to cast it, but as a result, the likelihood of failure compared to something like Strengthen Shield, was much greater.
Even then, if I were to buy Flame Shot, it would cost me 1500 points.
But despite that, for some odd reason, Flame Shot immediately appealed to me in a way Strengthen Shield didn’t. I had only come to the decision to purchase Strengthen Shield after hours upon hours of weighing the pros and cons of doing so. Granted, that was before I earned over two thousand points in the span of a week, but proportionally speaking, Strengthen Shield would’ve costed me less back then than compared to now with Flame Shot.
Biting my bottom lip in trepidation, I tapped on my point band.
***
Sitting down on the blood red gateway to the dream, I absentmindedly inspected the twelve vials of potion I had brewed as well as the scroll for Flame Shot. Having practiced casting it every second, of ever minute, of every waking hour of the past three days and all of Sunday, I could reliably hit the center of a target that was even twenty yards away.
It was strange, as contrary to my expectation that I would fail miserably, I was able to successfully cast Flame Shot on my first attempt.
Of course, having used all of my points to buy Flame Shot, I wasn’t able to rent out a private training room and use golems to simulate a combat scenario, so I wasn’t able to say just how effectively I would be able to implement the spell in the real world, but at a bare minimum, I at least knew I could cast it.
Looking down at my pocket watch, I closed my eyes, seeing that there was a little less than a minute before the second dream would begin.